How to Rescue a Cake... and what to do with too much frosting

A very awesome friend of mine asked me to make her a birthday cake. Okay, sure. What do you like? She says chocolate cake - maybe with cherry pie filling and strawberry frosting. Okay, sure. What color do you like? She says blue. Okay, so I think to myself a cherry and strawberry cake colored blue. Should be easy.

Baking can be easy - if you follow the rules. Cake and decorating cakes has one simple rule: patience!

I did not possess a lot of that last night. I wanted to hurry up and finish the cake. And because of that, I ended up making too much frosting and the tint of the frosting was just not right on. Also, I filled and frosted it too soon. It's not going to be eaten till later today and so I should have waited until today to fill and frost it.

I knew that, too. I had other plans last night but then a call from my friend got me thinking about that cake again. It was all baked and ready to go - just waiting for this afternoon to get filled and frosted... but then I stopped what I was doing and started filling and frosting it right away... doh! That's where my problem started. Next thing I know, I'm looking at the clock going - it's that late already. Crumb, I wanted to do something else with my time tonight - now my back hurts and my feet are swollen (I am 33 weeks pregnant). I really need to take it easy.

So, this morning I took another look at the cake and I thought - there is a way to fix this. Even though the filling was falling out at the sides, I took the excess frosting out of the fridge, let it warm to room temperature and put on another layer of frosting. Then, to resurrect my mess I took some fresh strawberries [23] in honor of her birthday - and pushed them into the frosting. Really looks good now.

So how to rescue a cake: fruit. Fruit is pretty much the best way I can think of doing it. The frosting is already strawberry flavored, might as well add some fresh fruit on top. Looks pretty and and now even though my cake is a bit wobbly - it will work. Plus I think fresh fruit is the tops - tastes so good - so fresh!

Thankfully, I can learn from my failures - turn them into successes... and what to do with all that leftover frosting? Cupcakes! My four year old has the day off on Friday, we are going to bake cupcakes together and top them with a mountain high amount of strawberry blue frosting!

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We ate the cake and it was pretty filling. The fact that I filled and frosted it the night before did something else to the cake. The cake absorbed all that filling and then the texture of the cake wasn't so much moist and spongy but thick and fudgy. Not necessarily a bad thing - just interesting. The frosting was really thick - not too thick for some folks though :) Sometimes I worry needlessly...

Want to make it yourself?

Chocolate Cake
(Adapted from Chocolatetown Special Cake via Great American Favorite Brand Name Cookbook)

1/2 cup Dutch cocoa
1/2 cup boiling water
2/3 cup shortening
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 egg whites, beaten
2 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cup buttermilk

Heat oven to 175-C degrees. Grease and flour two 9-inch round baking pans. In small bowl, stir together cocoa and boiled water. Set aside. In a large mixer, combine shortening, sugar and extract till fluffy. Add eggs and beat again. In another bowl sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Alternately add the flour mixture and the buttermilk to the sugar mixture and beat well. Blend in cocoa mixture and blend very well.
Pour batter into pans and bake 35 to 40 minutes or until wooden toothpick or satay pricker somes out clean. Remove from oven, cool 10 minutes, then remove from pans and cool completely before frosting.


Strawberry Buttercream Frosting

- recipe link here!  I doubled the recipe and used 1 tablespoon blue food dye to achieve a nice smurfy color. My frosting was also mixed with a couple of blueberries and strawberries and some leftover Cherry Cream Filling. But leave out those changes and you've got the perfect kids birthday cake frosting :)

Cherry Cream Filling

1/2 cup whipping cream/heavy cream/ aka slagroom
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 can cherry pie filling*

In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine all ingredients and whisk continuously until thick - about 4 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool completely (chill overnight) before filling cake or cupcakes.

*So now you've got a half a can of cherry pie filling - my husband ate the leftovers together with vanilla yogurt as a late night snack - I suggest you do the same  :)

Chocolate Cake with Strawberries

Sometimes a nice chocolate cake with fresh strawberries is all you need - This one wasn't even made for a birthday - because sometimes you can bake a cake 'cause you want too :)

More Cake Please!!!

Here are a variety of cakes I made in the last couple years - for different occasions.

This one is the Tunnel of Fudge chocolate cake - it's chocolate cake with a middle layer of chocolate fudge - it's really rich for the true chocolate lover... I like to decorate a cake with nuts and fruit - strawberries are a personal favorite of mine.

As you can see - more strawberries - the more the better - yummy - here we have a cake with a delicious cream cheese frosting - strawberries and cream cheese frosting pair very well!

Another strawberry! This cake just looks like one. The "seeds" are made using skittles and the leaf is made using starbursts (a taffy type of candy) -- I think I made this one for my daughter's 2nd birthday.

This is a different kind of a cake - because it's an American-style cream cheese cake - one of my personal favorites - Raspberry White Chocolate Cheesecake. The first time I had it was from the Cheesecake Factory - a very popular restaurant in the U.S. - after that experience I was sold on cheesecake because truthfully I never really liked it - but this cake is the bomb!

This is a very tasty, Southern-style cake. It's called Kentucky butter cake - and it is very, very buttery. It has then a light layer of icing on top and again, what better than to serve it with fresh fuit and a few walnuts!

Layered Cakes with Props!

I recently made a couple different layered cakes. One for my daughter's fourth birthday and one for a friend's baby shower/birthday.

My daughter requested a barbie princess cake - but I think she had no idea she was getting an actual barbie doll in the cake. This is a popular design - one that my own mother made for me growing up. Of course, Wilton has a special cake pan especially for this type of cake - I decided to make it a four layer cake for her fourth birthday. I made the cake banana bread type - with banana frosting and a yellow marshmallow fondant on top - which is nice to use for this type of cake - it has the appearance of fabric being draped over the cake - and because it's marshmallow fondant - it tastes really yummy.

The cake for my friend's baby shower/birthday was requested to be chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. And I was wondering how can I make that interesting. So, then I came up with having it look like a hot-air balloon basket. And that turned out very cute. Props are especially nice with specialty cakes. The inside layers that were cut out for the basket - made a smaller two layer cake - that went to my friend's husband to eat - he really liked having his own mini personal cake. I also made little clouds to go with the cake - to act as if the basket/balloon was in the air - those little cakes where yummy, too.